Training grounds

I've been spending quite a bit of time on Sisi recently to practice with my Vengeance (our killboard is taking 30 million ISK in hits everytime I lose it, and it's starting to ruin our efficiency, which wasn't that hot too begin with :P). For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, Sisi is the Test Server also known as Singularity. The main (real) server is called Tranquility, or "TQ" for short.

But Sisi is awesome because absolutely everything in the game that can fit in a station (i.e, not Supercapitals) is seeded at only 100 ISK. This means I can lose a Vengeance on Sisi for about a thousandth of the price it would be on TQ, and all combat is in one main system in NullSec. So you can fit up a ship for pretty much nothing, pop outside, warp to a combat area, murder somebody/get murdered and pop back into the station to re-ship.

It's brilliant for those of us with shallow wallets but a yearning to fly expensive ships, as you can learn all the ins and outs of your ship on Sisi without ever risking your "real" money or killboard on TQ.

I've learnt that I can kill most frigates pretty easily, brawl out most cruisers and give some battlecruisers a run for their money. (I even tackled a Rokh the other day after spiraling in like a PvP pro and called for help in Local. A Titan and three Cynabals turned up, proceeded to waste the Rokh and then nail me. Oops).

I'm loving Sisi because it's letting me practice important PvP skills against extremely dangerous targets that I would never dream of attacking usually (like a huge battlecruiser gang) Skills like spiraling and avoiding smartbombs are important for frigate pilots, so if I'm going to specialise into these hulls I need all the practice I can get. Once I feel confident my skills are high enough (SP and experience-wise), I'll start taking my more expensive ships out into "real" combat on TQ!

But obviously the problem comes in that you'll be fighting ships with ridiculous fittings that you'd never see on TQ, because everything on Sisi is cheap as dirt. Full set of Snake implants? Sure go ahead. Tech II rigs for your cruiser? Hell why not. This can create some odd results, like a fully faction fit Rifter brawling a buffer-fit Brutix to the death over the course of about five minutes. Local rage was frothy and hilarious.

And of course you have the bored capital pilots randomly dropping into Combat Areas to spam fighters everywhere or fire off half a dozen smartbombs in the middle of a cruiser fight. Annoying as hell, because almost nobody in Sisi has the ability to actually kill them, and the ones that do can't be bothered, as said Capital pilots will simply buy a new carrier, plus fittings for about 2000 ISK and be out again.


Even so, I'd recommend Sisi for PvP pilots in training whose wallets' can't take the strain of a dozen expensive ship losses. It's fun, silly, and lolfits are everywhere, because you can frankly get away with it at these prices :P


More info on Sisi
Download for Sisi Launcher